change vertical position of footer in scrlttr2 from KOMA

Question

I have a document that uses KOMA script. It is a scrlttr2. I want to set a footer, which I did with

\setkomavar{firstfoot}{
  bla bla bla
}

Now the bla bla is a little bit longer, too long for the page. I’ve found that I can change the footer position with something called firstfootvpos.

My question

Where do I have to put the firstfootvpos? I tried

\documentclass[paper=a4]{scrlttr2}

\@setplength{firstfootvpos}{200mm}
\setkomavar{firstfoot}{
bla bla bla
…

which I’ve found somewhere in the net, but it didn’t work (i.e. LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}).

If I put it below \begin{document} then I get the error You can't use '\spacefactor' in vertical mode..

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

If one understands what \makeatletter and \makeatother do, then one can put the variable change everywhere before the document ends. So it should look like:

\documentclass[paper=a4]{scrlttr2}

\makeatletter
\@setplength{firstfootvpos}{200mm}
\makeatother

\setkomavar{firstfoot}{
bla bla bla
…

Why? Well, seems that it’s because the @-letter has some strange extra behaviour on tex. That is how I understood it without being a tex-guru.

---

Update

One can now directly use \setplength{firstfootvpos}{200mm} anywhere:

Because I'm fed up with the complaining that @setplength doesn't work, there are now additionally \setplength, \newplength and \addtoplength. Note: This extension exists as of KOMA-Script 3.26.2980.

https://komascript.de/release3.26